262 THE PRINCIPLES OF SELF-MASTERY
- Debts incurred for luxuries that become a dead loss
- Debts incurred in the course of professional or business trading
which represent service or merchandise that can be converted back
into assets
The first type of debt is the one to be avoided. The second type
may be indulged in, providing the one incurring the debts uses judg-
ment and does not go beyond the bounds of reasonable limitation.
The moment a person buys beyond his or her limitations, that person
enters the realm of speculation, and speculation swallows more of its
victims than it enriches.
Practically all people who live beyond their means are tempted to
speculate with the hope that they may recoup, at a single turn of the
wheel of fortune, so to speak, their entire indebtedness. The wheel
generally stops at the wrong place and, far from finding themselves out
of debt, those who indulge in speculation are bound more closely as
slaves of debt.
The fear of poverty breaks down the willpower of its victims and
they then find themselves unable to restore their lost fortunes. What
is still more sad, they lose all ambition to extricate themselves from
the slavery of debt.
In wartime, millions face combat without flinching, knowing that
death might overtake them at any moment. But those same people,
when facing the fear of poverty, often cringe and out of sheer desper-
ation, which paralyzes their reason, sometimes commit suicide.
The person who is free from debt may whip poverty and achieve
outstanding financial success, but, if bound by debt, such achievement
is only a remote possibility, and never a probability.
Fear of poverty is a negative, destructive state of mind. Moreover,
one negative state of mind has a tendency to attract other similar states
of mind. For example, the fear of poverty may attract the fear of ill
health, and these two may attract the fear of old age, so that the victim